The present invention relates to a video display method and format, and more particularly to a video display method and format that changes a video display during a fast playback mode.
Current technology has provided television and video viewers with many viewing options, including the ability to fast-forward past commercials or program portions that are not of interest to the viewer. Fast-forwarding tends to cause some problems for both advertisers and viewers, however. With respect to advertisers, the visual content of commercials progresses too quickly in a fast-forward or rewind mode for viewers to see the name/logo of the product being advertised. With respect to viewers, fast-forwarding or rewinding (collectively referred to as xe2x80x9cfast playbackxe2x80x9d) makes it more difficult for viewers to ascertain station/broadcaster information or scene information. Although the video data itself could be altered so that information appears during a fast playback mode, alteration of the video data is impractical and may adversely affect image quality when the video data is played during normal playback mode.
There is a need for a system that can provide viewer information when the visual content is being viewed in a fast playback mode without requiring extensive modification of the video""s encoding format.
Accordingly, the present invention takes advantage of the additional flexibility provided by an MPEG-4 standard by including metadata that varies the visual content on a screen based on the playback mode. More particularly, the format according to the invention has a main video potion that includes primary content data to be displayed during a normal viewing mode and a metadata portion that includes watermark data corresponding to the primary content data and instructions for displaying the watermark data during a modified mode, such as a fast playback (e.g., fast forward or fast reverse) mode.
The watermark data itself can be any information that a program producer or advertiser wishes to be displayed when the program is played in the modified playback mode. The watermark can be displayed in any manner, such as by superimposing the watermark over the primary program content, removing the primary program and displaying the watermark by itself, or displaying the watermark in one portion of the screen and the primary program content in the remaining portion of the screen.